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9 thoughts on “Sandpit”

I have a little maths puzzle which I cannot work out completely even with a spreadsheet. I am such a maths illiterate! I will try to give all the relevant data as clearly as I can and I hope there is enough information to enable a solution. Yes, I am crowd-sourcing here.

First, there are six sets of numbers which yield ratios. Express the ratio as A/B which is easy of course. I give the example of the first ratio.

A B

100 20 Ratio = 5
100 80
100 20
100 80
100 7

100 80
100 160
100 40
100 160
100 15

100 20
100 10
100 10
100 40
100 3

100 80
100 40
100 160
100 160
100 15

100 20
100 10
100 40
100 10
100 3

100 213
100 106
100 426
100 106
100 426

You will notice that some ratios result in long strings of decimals. What is the lowest common multiple of the whole six sets such that all these ratios with decimals can be made whole numbers (integers)? The complicating factor is that some of the numbers in the above six sets have been rounded to integers to themselves: probably all rounded down but maybe some rounded up for .5 and above.

The final data you may need are these. All these numbers represent trades in a (computer game) market with six commodities. In each set, a commodity is being used to buy the other five. Market prices never change, they are unaffected by trades. You will notice this is a very unrealistic market for both this reason and because trading one way and then back the other would result in excessive losses which no real market (except perhaps a pawn shop) would replicate.

Hang on, the values of the divisors are known within a narrow range. Coming from a computer program, the most likely rounding function used is INT(n). INT(n) would round the decimal down so 9.1 and 9.9 would both become 9. Using that information we should be able to find the lowest common multiple… I think